David Cunliffe: Look I actually think this hasn’t been too bad a week at all. What’s happened is that support for me within my team is absolutely rock solid and I think public support has galvanised in the face of what people can see is pretty petty politics by the current government.

Let’s just take a look back at your week. I’m wondering why you would have used or inferred that people who don’t support you within your party are scabs, when it’s such an emotionally charged and derogatory term. What were you trying to do?

I made the point Lisa that particularly for the Labour movement over many decades when we’re up against very powerful forces one of the most important things, if not the most important thing that we need to do is to stick together and present a united front. And I’m very pleased that that is exactly what my team is doing and will do. And what we’re going to do now –

And did you need to remind them of that, that they needed to be united? Did you need to remind them?

And what we’re going to do now is to focus on the issues that matter to Kiwis. And that’s about their jobs, it’s about their homes and it’s about their families.

Oh, so it’s not about trips in China, cash for access or dodgy donations then? It’s taken Labour to be caught with their hand in the till regarding trips in China, cash for access and dodgy donations to suddenly realise that isn’t a winning strategy?

As much at home writing editorials as being the subject of them, Cam has won awards, including the Canon Media Award for his work on the Len Brown/Bevan Chuang story. When he’s not creating the news, he tends to be in it, with protagonists using the courts, media and social media to deliver financial as well as death threats.

They say that news is something that someone, somewhere, wants kept quiet. Cam Slater doesn’t do quiet and, as a result, he is a polarising, controversial but highly effective journalist who takes no prisoners.